By Michelle DuVal

Michelle teaches mindfulness based stress reduction

Monday morning.  A quick phone call from a close friend, “I need to talk to you but I’m at work right now.  I’ll call you when I get off.  It’s important.”  You hang up, and your mind goes into a tailspin.  What’s this about?  Is she okay?  She sounded angry … did I do something?  What time is it?  9:05?  What could this possibly be about?

Chances are your mind will continue this tailspin throughout the day, and by the end of the work day, your body will be showing signs of your state of mind. Your stomach might be in knots, your blood pressure elevated, or your neck and shoulders tensed up. Without even hearing the subject of the phone call you’ve spent the last eight hours in a process that in my classes we call “bruising.”

The easiest way to explain bruising, and how to manage it for the health of our minds and bodies, is to set up another scenario: If I were to hit your arm with just enough force to slightly crumple a piece of paper, it probably wouldn’t leave a bruise. But if I were to stand there for eight hours and repeatedly thump you like this, by the end of the day your arm would be black and blue.

That is what happens to the body when we spend prolonged periods of time rehashing and rehearsing stressful thoughts. Every time we have a stressful thought, there’s a physical reaction that bruises the body.

We can manage this type of bruising the same way we would if someone were physically hitting us: by creating space. In a mindful approach to bruising we create space in the mind by shifting our awareness from the stressful past to the present. You can use breathing or focus on the your weight in a chair.

Moving your awareness to anything experiential creates a space between your thoughts. From that safe space you can choose to refocus your mind on your work instead of the stressful thoughts of what may or may not be coming ahead.  And if the stressful thoughts arise a hundred times in a day, we practice letting them go as many times by shifting our awareness again and again back to the safe space of the present.

Then, when five o’clock rolls around and your friend calls to tell you she’s having a party, you might actually feel like celebrating.

For more information go to duvalmeditation.com